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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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The Supreme Court offered no happy endings Thursday when it closed out its October 2006 with a whimper disguised as a bang. Well, not so much a whimper as a whispered promise of a whole new generation of lawsuits brought by parents of students who feel they’ve been deprived of some right to attend some school for some reason having to do with race.

The nation’s legal and political communities—not to mention millions of affected parents—watched and waited all term long for some sort of clarity and finality in the area of how far public school officials can go in using racial “components” to determine student bodies. On the last day of its term, the Court instead gave us all more ambiguous standards, more mealy-mouthed phrases, and more uncertainty. It is now significantly more difficult for school administrators to justify policies that include race as a factor in determining admission; but it is not impossible for them to do so. And everyone ought to try to work together toward some sort of diversity in public schools. Got it?

There was the most conservative opinion, which garnered only four votes, the slightly less conservative opinion, which held the field because it included Justice Anthony’s Kennedy’s concurrence, and the least conservative opinions, offered by the tamed lions of the Court’s left. Taken together they portray not just a bitterly divided group of nine smart judges but also a new legal doctrine that is just as muddled as the one it purports to replace...

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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I suspect that a great many people who will be forming opinions in the next few hours and days about the United States Supreme Court’s landmark abortion ruling will not spend the time necessary to read through and truly understand both the import of the decision and the language and rationale employed by the Justices in reaching it. Both are truly extraordinary.

Not only has abortion law in this country taken a sudden and sharp turn to the right but the majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (writing for five) and the dissenting opinion by Justice Ruth B. Ginsburg (writing for four) presage a pitched battle going forward on this topic. Forget all the happy talk about the new Chief Justice, John J. Roberts, Jr., bringing peace and karma to the High Court. Just read the Ginsburg dissent and you’ll know why that’s no longer an option.

Indeed, it is no coincidence that Ginsburg, the lone remaining woman on the Court, would have been chosen to write the dissent on behalf of three of her colleagues. When you read her analysis—an “alarming” decision, she writes-- you can almost hear her fury as she describes what she perceives to be the majority’s warped reliance upon “ancient notions” of women’s rights that include the “antiabortion shibboleth” that “women who have abortions come to regret them.”

It also is no coincidence that Wednesday’s ruling played out as it did only after the first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, retired and was replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. Alito voted with the Court’s majority today. O’Connor almost certainly would not have done so—and, in fact, did not do so in 2000 when a similar Congressional effort to ban the so-called “partial birth” abortion procedure failed to get five votes.

Do yourself and everyone else a favor. Read the ruling, carefully and thoroughly, before you grab hold strongly of your opinion of it. There is both more in it that meets the eye and less; more poetry than you’d expect and certainly more emotion than we need. No matter which side of the roiling debate you find yourself on surely we all should be able to agree that after today the whole legal landscape on abortion has changed.

Katie is on her way back from Blacksburg, Virginia. So today's First Look at the broadcast comes from Wyatt Andrews, who offers a preview of his story on the Supreme Court ruling on what the law calls partial birth abortion. Click the monitor for details.